National Archives releases over 13,000 files related to the assassination of JFK

President Biden’s administration on Thursday released more than 13,000 records of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

With the further release of documents, about 98% of all files related to the 1963 assassination have now been released. However, 3% of the records still remain redacted in whole or partially, according to the National Archives, which controls government records.

Of the JFK files, 4,300 of them remain partially redacted. The files include more information on accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald and his time spent in Mexico City.

“We’re 59 years after President John Kennedy was killed and there’s just no justification for this,” said Judge John H. Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board from 1994-98.

Citing the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which previously sued the administration to make all the documents public, NBC News reported that, of the redacted files, 44 were related to a CIA agent, George Joannides, and a covert Cuba-related program he ran that came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald less than four months before Kennedy was shot.

The foundation believes the CIA is responsible for withholding most of the records at issue.

“We believe all CIA records substantively related to Mr. Joannides were previously released, with only minor redactions, such as CIA employees’ names and locations,” CIA officials said after the records release.

“We’re talking about over 87,000 documents originally included in the JFK Act collection,” the agency said, adding that, “as of today, CIA has completely disclosed more than 84,000 of those to the public without any redactions. That amounts to about more than 95% of those documents, released in full.”

The JFK records were originally supposed to be released by 2017, but the release was delayed by then-President Donald Trump and then by Biden in 2021.